Tag: faith

The effect or influence that a particular thing has on us depends largely on where that thing falls on the scale of our values. It's one thing to lose your folding fan in a foreign country and quite another to lose your passport.

At the age of 20, I graduated from the Orthodox Theological Seminary. I thought I was talented, I was confident, and I had a very clear idea of the path I wanted to take in life. I had all the answers. Or perhaps I hadn't asked myself enough questions.

When I was 20, my spiritual life felt like an exam where I had been given a topic I hadn’t prepared for.

Life is a stage that we enter without a script, although we are constantly influenced by forces of varying visibility: social, educational, religious, economic, and political.

I was twenty when I first became curious about God. I was fortunate to see His presence in the lives of my friends and longed for that same presence in my own life.

In our desperate search for miraculous answers or confirmations, we often forget that the most profound miracles are hidden in the seemingly mundane details of our lives.

I was talking to the man I call Professor and I asked him, "I know you had reservations about getting baptised. Why did you decide to do it anyway? What was the deciding factor?"

Living one day according to God's plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.

If we take an honest look around us and within ourselves, we discover that the gulf between the mentality of those who choose prayer over medical treatment and the essence of the Christian mindset is not as deep as it seems. But it remains a gulf nonetheless.

During the time when the people of Israel were enslaved in Ta Kemet (the Black Land), and Prince Moses, the great scribe, had taken refuge among the northern Arabian tribe of Midian, a captivating story shared by the campfire caught his attention. It was the tale of another prince who, like him, had suddenly lost everything.

He was born in 1935 in Narvik, Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, at a time when the clouds of war were gathering. In 1940, in the space of a few months, Narvik was controlled by Germany, conquered by the Allies, and then left to the Germans.

“I’ve left the church, but not my faith.” This phrase has become increasingly common in today’s secularised society. Millennials are often the first to express this sentiment, but they are not the only ones. A letter sent to a church that someone has abandoned is both poignant and powerful, serving as a heartfelt plea for churches everywhere to take this message seriously.

With packs and tents strapped to our backs, it took our little group of three several hours to reach the hidden valley. The lush, green rainforest was cool and damp and as we gingerly clambered over moss-covered boulders, we attempted to follow an almost non-existent track that wound its way parallel to the mountain stream.

The question of human suffering concerns atheists and believers alike. For the former, the search for an answer drives them to the heights of despair. For the latter, suffering inevitably poses a dilemma: why is there so much suffering in the world if the God who created it is loving and omnipotent?

Andrew McChesney knew what he wanted—to be a famous journalist. He thought Moscow would be a good place to learn his craft and make a name for himself, which he did. But his years in Russia shaped his life in a much deeper way—it was there that he discovered God and found new meaning in life.